Food and the law, Session II

October 18, 2007 at 6:26 am · Filed under eating, law

The menu: baked wild salmon, mixed greens with avocado, asparagus, and roasted peppers, baguette, homemade pumpkin bread, hot cider

 The topic: Should obesity be a category that gets anti-discrimination protection under a federal scheme like Title VII? Should it qualify under things like the Americans with Disabilities Act? Are people who are not morbidly obese, but only overweight according to the over 25 BMI standard, discriminated against? As you can imagine, there were many very strong opinions on this topic. Most people felt that weight was not a characteristic like race or sex that should be included for discrimination protection in employment settings. But a few felt very strongly that people who discriminated on the basis of weight should even be sanctioned for their conduct. Most agreed, though, that what we are talking about with the obesity crisis (which some people think is a made-up or dramatized public health issue) is really related to health and not necessarily fatness.

Anyway, again, very interesting conversation, great food (that salad he makes is the same one he made for the dinner last year and it’s delicious). Apparently there were a few open spots in this class, a few people have dropped? I don’t know that he’ll let anybody new in at this point, but there were a couple new people there last night who just got added.

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